It's doom and gloom, a pall having fallen over the Lakers' faithful.

There are bruises to heal, egos and confidence to massage, assurances to be made. The ground feels suddenly unsteady, unfamiliar.

The Lakers -- always with that self-assuredness, that unmistakable elan -- left shaken by their Game 2 loss to the Spurs, by the 2-0 deficit they must now overcome to capture an increasingly unlikely fourth consecutive championship.

It was not just a loss, of course, but a beating. A complete pounding that felt foreign, the kind of punishment the Lakers had grown used to inflicting.

The Lakers have lost by more points in a playoff game the past four years, but never has a defeat left them appearing so clearly undermanned, so strikingly inferior, so vulnerable.

The old players looking too old, the young too young, the superstars only human.